How Buddy Spawned Bob

Have you ever considered the possibility that Bob Dylan may never have existed if Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson hadn’t died in that 1959 plane crash? That if the buses on the Winter Dance Party tour had been adequately heated, the world may never have heard Rainy Day Woman # 12 and 35? That if the tour had decided to visit the North Midwest in, say, July instead of February, the man who stands at the very vanguard of American music, wouldn’t exist? That instead of being the world-famous Bob Dylan touring endlessly the world’s stages and releasing a string of albums that were great, then good, then fairly lousy, then good again, Bob would be Zimmerman, possibly a lawyer in the mining town of Hibbing Minnesota?

Thought not.

Here’s the scenario: from the mid 1950s to the late 1960s package tours were common, a series of bands and performers touring together under the aegis of a promoter like Dick Clark or Alan Freed. On February 3, 1959 the Winter Dance Party was heading from Clear Lake, Iowa to Moorhead, Minnesota. The performers were near mutiny. The buses’ heating systems were no match for a Minnesota winter, and the performers had taken to sleeping in their by now rank stage outfits: anything to keep the cold out. Buddy Holly told his band that he’d charter a plane to the Minnesota gig, where they could shower and relax awhile. Somehow, young star Richie Valens and Chantilly Lace star The Big Bopper inveigled their way onto the plane, along with Holly.

People know what happened next. As Don McLean sang in American Pie it was “The day the music died.” However, for Robert Thomas Velline of Fargo North Dakota, the exact opposite was true.

When the tour rolled into Minnesota, and everyone cried, the promoters were adamant that the show must go on. Unfortunately, three of its headliners were now dead, so a talent search was quickly organised. This is how Robert Thomas Velline, who billed himself as Bobby Vee, found himself a headliner in Moorhead Minnesota. Prior to that, the fifteen year old Velline and his band of school pals The Shadows (not to be confused with Hank B. Marvin’s Apache combo) had never played a real engagement, let alone one which would headline on a package tour.

Needless to say, they were a hit with the teenage crowd, and Bobby Vee was catapulted to instant fame. After the show ended, Vee was offered a tour, and he needed a piano player. After auditioning some players, Vee settled on a young unknown musician who called himself Elston Gunn, and the expanded combo played a few shows before Elston Gunn enrolled at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis under his real name Robert Zimmerman.

However, after playing with Bobby Vee, the music bug had bitten Robert hard. Before the year was out he had rebranded himself Bob Dylan and set off for New York to follow his new hero, Woody Guthrie. The rest of this story is well known; Dylan became one of the most famous performers in the world.